GSA Proposed Rule on Price Reporting Requirements

GSA proposes price reporting requirements for Schedule, GWAC and IDIQ contracts; public comment due May 4th

The General Services Administration (GSA) issued a proposed rule on March 4, 2015 that responds to the contracting concept of “category management” introduced December 4, 2014 by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP). The OFPP concept shifts federal purchasing’s focus from managing purchases and prices individually on thousands of procurement actions by dozens of federal agencies to managing categories of purchases across the government. To implement this concept, GSA’s proposed rule would require vendors on Federal Supply Schedule (FSS), Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs) and Governmentwide Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quality (IDIQ) contracts to report all government transactions, including prices paid. GSA contends the new rule is needed because the government currently lacks a mechanism that facilitates examination of prices paid by agencies on individual contracts, and this has caused pricing disparities in contracts for similar products and services.

If the proposed rule is adopted, the General Services Administration Acquisition Regulation (GSAR) would be amended to require that vendors report transaction data on individual FSS, GWAC and IDIQ contracts. Details to be reported include unit of measure, quantity of items sold, universal product codes, prices paid per unit, and total price. Such contracts accounted for about $39 billion in federal procurements in fiscal year 2014, according to the agency. GSA says their existing price reduction-related monitoring requirements will be pared back to compensate for the additional reporting burden on contractors. FSS contracts administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs would be exempt from the new rules. More…..